A. Industry background
The IT industry comprises businesses engaged in the production and maintenance of software applications created for personal and business use. Software sectors tend to operate according to two overlapping business models. The first is a license/maintenance based (on-premises) model and the second is a cloud-based model, such as SaaS or PaaS. Software services, including training documentation, consulting and data recovery are some of the important industry sub-sectors.
B. Key challenges
Being one of the fastest moving sectors in the world, IT companies exist in a climate of extraordinary pressure to ensure that projects are delivered on-time, on the budget to specification, and according to the expected quality standards. This means they are constantly looking to find and retain highly specialized software professionals and project managers who will deliver recognizable world-class project outcomes in a timely and agile manner.
IT performance management is perhaps one of the most essential areas of business – given the importance to hire, retain, and nurture talent in the organization. A recent CIO article highlighted some of the most pressing issues facing the software sector, common industry challenges:
- The constant battle to find and retain talent.
- Tracking investment of time on projects to keep them in line with the budget.
- The agile project teams often oversights the behavioral side of project team effectiveness, leading to lower employee engagement levels and decreased productivity.
- Monitoring the ROI from different industry verticals and identifying profitable investments has always remained a key challenge for management.
- Often employees are moved to client locations for long term projects, making it immensely difficult for their line managers to give their performance appraisal.
- Standalone software is no longer enough and there is an increasing need for third-party integration which means that project managers may now be required to interface with third-party vendors during implementation, leading to extended production timelines and increased costs.
- Software created can pretty much be deployed globally, this leads to high competition requiring increased cost-effectiveness and reduced time to market.
- Performance management challenges due to elements that cannot be fully quantified or measured like job satisfaction and workplace fairness.
C. Solutions offered
C. Solutions offeredAssessTEAM was designed for IT performance management, we are uniquely positioned to help information technology organizations develop and sustain world-class project management and product delivery process. Our project performance and project profitability analysis features find resonance with many small and large software services enterprises.
1. Cloud-based System with Data-driven Dashboards: Your globally distributed software product delivery teams can use AssessTEAM’s cloud-based real-time IT performance management system on any internet-connected computer or mobile device. Our highly automated process enables you to appraise your staff in a 360-degree format using both technical and behavioral competencies. Powerful dashboards provide real-time performance monitoring which is essential for fast-moving software organizations.
2. Project Profitability: As your organization comes under increased pressure to ensure ROI, you can make use of our project profitability feature. AssessTEAM measures man-hours invested and compare them to the project budget showing you profitability analysis reports in real-time. Monitor projects in real time to find problems before they affect profit margins. Effectively manage your team towards optimum profitability with clear actionable reporting.
3. Project Performance Evaluations: With success being dependent on the synergy and performance of software project teams, the project evaluations enable agile teams to evaluate their group members (including managers) for their performance on specific projects and receive feedback from the customers. The project performance evaluation reports present you with illuminating aggregated performance data including comparison metrics, making it easy for managers to quickly identify high performers, low performers, and outliers to take appropriate HR action.
4. Customer Feedback Integration: Customer feedback is critical to the success of any software company, AssessTEAM integrates a collection of customer feedback for projects delivered, this becomes the 5the metric that’s tracked in addition to self, peer, supervisor, and downward evaluations.
5. Third-Party Integration: As the software industry makes way for more standalone and independent vendors, the third party integration becomes a vital factor while choosing a program. AssessTEAM integrates seamlessly with the popular business systems like Google Apps, Office 365, Basecamp, Zoho and more, and leverages their Single sign-on authentication for enhanced security.
